Women in Weightlifting Part 1: Programming

A young female weightlifter once asked me whether she should be training differently from the guys at her gym. Women make up almost half of our weightlifting community, yet nearly all of the resources that are available are written for the default, male, weightlifter. This forces most women to rely on training plans that simply aren’t designed for their physiology.

I asked one of the best female weightlifters in the world, multi-time World Champion Nadezhda (Nadia) Evstyukhina, about topics she thinks women in weightlifting (and their coaches) should know of in order to get the most out of their training.

Nadezhda Evstyukhina

Together, Nadia and I set out to cover each of the following 3 topics in detail:

How to design training plans for women

The differences in technique between men and women

How sex affects men vs women before training or a competition

Today’s post will be about the first topic, how to design training plans for women.

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The entire body must be strong for weightlifting. The maximum amount of weight that a lifter can snatch or clean and jerk is limited not by their most powerful muscle groups, but by their weakest. If their legs are strong enough to pull 100kg, but their upper body isn’t strong enough to support 100kgs overhead, the lifter won’t complete the lift.

Women typically have a harder time developing speed in their lower bodies and muscle mass in their upper bodies than men. The following points should be considered when designing training plans for female weightlifters:

To address lower-body speed

Jumping exercises, such as box jumps, are a great exercise for developing lower-body speed and explosiveness. Female weightlifters should use jumping exercises more frequently than men of the same level. And while men typically perform jumping exercises towards the end of training, female weightlifters should consider doing them during their warm up.

Upper-body muscle mass

Building upper-body muscle mass is harder for women than for men. Also, women are typically more flexible, which increases the likelihood of injury when working with heavy weights during certain exercises. It’s advised that during the Base Phase, women should perform full-body exercises that require a lot of upper-body strength with less weight (as a percent of max) but for more reps. This increases hypertrophy, strengthens joints, and reduces the risk of injury.

It is also advised that women perform several General Physical Preparation exercises per training session that specifically target the upper-body muscles used in weightlifting. These include the trapezius and tricep muscles, and the muscles of the shoulder joint, lumbar, and thoracic spine.

Nadia recommends the following GPP exercises to be frequently performed:

Below is a training plan designed for two lifters of the same level. The program on the left is written for a 77kg male lifter, Adult Level-1 rank. The program on the right is written for a 58kg female lifter, also Adult Level-1 rank.

The two training plans for the male and female lifters are very similar. Both start with hyperextentions to warm up the back; have the same lower-body exercises (at the same rep and weight), and finish the workout with ab exercises and stretching. However, note that:

The box jumps are performed earlier in the workout for the female lifter because they are a higher-priority exercise for women, and deserve to be done when the body is not yet fatigued.

Exercises that depend heavily on upper-body strength are performed at lower weight (as a % of maximum) for women than for men, but at higher volume (more reps).

GPP exercises that target the muscles that are harder for women to develop are performed instead of the more general-strength exercises performed by the male lifter.

As seen in these two plans, female lifters typically lift a smaller % of their maximum (lower average intensity), but perform more reps than their male counterpart. The higher volume (Intensity * reps) aids in hypertrophy and reduces the risk of injury, however, it also requires women to focus on recovery activities more than men.

Female weightlifters should visit the sauna and receive massages more often than men in order to loosen tight muscles, get more blood flow to wash away free radicals, and increase the amount of nutrients passing through the recovering muscles.

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Female weightlifters and their coaches should know how a training plan should be adjusted during menstruation. Women generally fall into one of two categories:

Women who have fewer symptoms and don’t experience much discomfort. These women often feel an increase in strength and endurance, and have a hormonal surge that could actually aid them in reaching personal bests in various exercises. Women who fall into this category don’t need to change their training during menstruation.

Women who feel severe pain in the abdomen. These women are generally fatigued, lack power, and aren’t able to hold the rigidity in the back required for heavy lifts. Women who fall into this category should reduce their training workload for 1-3 days, when symptoms are at their worst.

The workload reduction shouldn’t be across all exercises, as some exercises won’t be affected by menstruation symptoms. Exercises that don’t require much speed or back rigidity can remain the same in the training plan. However, exercises that do require a lot of speed or back rigidity or are non-essential GPP should either not be performed, or performed at reduced weight.

Below are two training plans – the plan on the left is written for a 58kg female lifter not affected by menstruation symptoms. The program on the right is written for the same lifter, but who is affected by menstruation symptoms.

To reduce the workload, non-essential exercises that require rigidity, speed, or abdominal work are removed from the training plan on the right.

Essential exercises that require rigidity or speed are left in the program but are performed with less weight or at a lower volume.

Exercises that aren’t affected much by lack of speed or rigidity remain in the program.

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I hope this, and future articles we’re working on are helpful. None of the above practices are set in stone, but they should give you a sense of the guidelines many professional female weightlifters follow. Every lifter is unique. Lifters must listen to how they feel, and train accordingly.

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If you have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to read about regarding female lifters, let me know! Nadia is a huge asset to this discussion and will be happy to chime in.

Regarding jumping: It’s more difficult for women to develop lower body speed than it is for men. But, lower body speed is a necessity in weightlifting, so to develop the required speed, women are advised to perform exercises which develop lower body speed more often than men. Because of the difficulty in developing this speed, it’s often placed at the beginning of the workout, as the first exercises performed are done so with better results.

regarding Mark Rippetoe: His article is about what women can do in a training session. Nadia and I are saying that to reach the best results, this is what women typically should do, over a long period of time. This is kinda similar to the difference between what sprinters can do in training, and what they should do if their goal is to reach the best results in a year.

What Rippetoe is saying is that because women activate less muscle mass, they should lift heavier weights (and thus fewer reps), for an equivalent systemic stress of what men would experience with higher reps. He reasons that this is how women should train for the best strength development.

Great Article Yasha,
I like the use of more athletic moves and movements that stresses less weight and more reps for strength and hypertrophy. I also like the inclusions of kettlebells. They are often used with light weight for “core and cardio” when they are great for strength and performance. I like the Kettlebell high pull and the version I use starts from the power position which gives me leg drive (helps with the jerk dip) and allows for the use of heavier weight.
Looking forward to parts 2&3.

Great article as usual, and special thanks to Nadia for her time and insights into this topic. I’m looking forward to seeing the impact of her Online Team for female weightlifters on the female weightlifting community. What a fantastic way to engage and promote women of this sport!
After reading this blog, I searched the scientific literature (using Pubmed) and I had a very difficult time finding published studies that clearly demonstrate sex-related differences between men and women, with regard to muscle adaptation/hypertrophy to various strength training programs. I’ve often wondered “how” coaches (such as Nadia’s and Tatiana’s for example) determine and document the need for/benefit of sex-specific training programs. In other words, how do the great coaches of these world-class weightlifters determine what programming works best for their female athletes? It seems that the data must be out there, but I have no idea where to look.
As a scientist myself, I always prefer to see the evidence vs. taking someone’s word for it, especially if that “someone” happens to be an over-muscled, under-educated gym owner who expects their clients to take their bro-science philosophy as fact.
Can you and/or Nadia comment on this? More specifically, what advice can you offer to a female weightlifter who’s looking to take her weightlifting to the next level, and seeking a coach who truly knows the facts about how to program for women? What questions should she ask when coach shopping?

Wow, there’s a lot of great stuff you mentioned. There is very little public information (in English) that we found when researching this topic too. In the Soviet Union, nearly all (official) coaches were taught to use the same system for calculating average intensity and volume per day/week/month. Since every responsible athlete keeps a journal, sport scientists and head coaches were able to track individuals and entire teams through their progress and saw that there is a specific range for both intensity and volume at which athletes grew the fastest. For women, the average intensity (using the standard Soviet Intensity calculation) was about 7% lower than for men (if I’m remembering correctly). This is of course very generalized – but is the first step in building a plan: identifying how much work should/can be done. Knowing the intensity and volume at which a weightlifter should train at a specific state in their weightlifting career sets the template for planning all training.

One a tangent – having a standard approach to calculating intensity and volume is very important for a national system to grow. The US doesn’t have a standard for calculating either Intensity or Volume or at least I don’t know it). Because of this, coaches can’t present their results publicly in a way that other coaches would understand without thorough explanation. For example, Most Russian coaches would understand the following in the same way: Male weightlifters increase their total at the fastest rate when their average weekly/monthly intensity is 76±2%. Most American coaches would understand this, but differently from each other.

What should a weightlifter look for in a coach? This is a very difficult question. I can tell you what made my coach Lev Epshteyn great: He went out of his way to learn from others, and pushed me to do the same. He would never claim to know everything, and together we learned from other lifters and coaches. He was an educated coach (from Russia) with decades of experience. And he worked with athletes on my level in the past, and developed them into great weightlifters. This is what I think everyone should look for in a coach:
1) someone who’s always striving to learn more
2) someone who’s experienced, educated, and successful in coaching
3) someone who’s worked with athletes of your level, sex, and age.
4) someone you like as a person and are willing to trust with your weightlifting career.

Helping athletes manage their expectations and “emotional side” appears to be underdeveloped necessity. As a coach, it’s easy to talk about technique, training plans, strength development and so on. Although, it appears that there are coaches (and as well as athletes) either do not want to acknowledge or administer being a guide or a catalyst for their athletes subjective wellness. Which may be a component of working productively with a specific athlete or potentially a significant number of them.

I would guess that it’s a sensitive subject to elaborate on and I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a number of opinions on your writing.